I worked for the DA for a few years, and dealt closely with a lot of local politicians. As the inevitability of the water crisis unfurled, I got progressively angrier, as I could only too well imagine how this played out:

“It’s a national competency, it’s not my portfolio, the rain will come, ja we hear what you’re saying Mr Expert but you don’t understand the nuances of politics, okay the water zombie apocalypse is coming but it’ll be all the ANC’s fault and I’m too busy fighting with JP Smith; no we can’t just allocate a tender for this without agonising and vacillating over it for months and months and no I AM NOT RISKING MY POLITICAL CAREER TO MAKE THIS CALL AND HEY CAPE TOWN IF YOU DON’T QUIT USING WATER THE IMPENDING ZOMBIE H2O APOCALYPSE WILL BE ALL YOUR FAULT.

But we’re praying for rain and a well run city can’t run out of water… Oh wait, shit…”

I am as sick and contemptuous of the Christian conservative echelons running this city as I have ever been.

You can’t divide by zero.

You can’t address a fundamental minimum water supply issue only by curbing demand. You need to boost supply, stupid. And they were warned.

But instead, we’re spending our energy getting the military on standby to keep the incoming rabidly thirsty masses at bay, while simultaneously wasting precious bureaucratic resource time threatening punitive steps against “illegal” Airbnb owners while this Cape Town ship is sinking (also: with respect, please go. fuck. yourselves).

The DA had it in the bag — better education systems, higher employment rates, clean governance track record, growing tourism appeal — and now our local government is going to throw it aaaall away on something as obvious and stupid as basic service delivery. With knock-on effects on all the wins their PR machine keeps beating the drum about.

This City Works For You.

Moreover, their “Development At All Cost” strategy in Cape Town has many of the hallmarks of the ancient Easter Island civilisation, feverishly building large stone totems pointing at the sky, while the very construction process destroyed the ecosystem the island locked society relied on to survive.

This city is heading for ecocide, a term you would do well to read up on, but essentially translates into “Total End-Of-Days-Shit Systemic Failure”. We’re now going to finish off the coastal fresh water aquifers, and without rain to replenish them, they’ll be filled with — you guessed it — salt water.

And then, kids, we will be totally and royally fucked.

Will the real SLIM Shady please stand up

We are in deep, deep shit, and what is called for, at the very minimum, is dynamic leadership and a sense of urgency about getting large scale desalination underway. And if that leadership is not forthcoming from the current crop at CCT, then best we do the necessary to replace them, or get on it without them. As in yesterday.